Christina Loeffler's Reviews > Leviathan Wakes

4, turns out husbands CAN be right sometimes stars!!!

This review along with a recipe for Mariner Valley skillet lasagna is now featured on my blog Recipe & a Read: https://recipeandaread.wordpress.com/...

So lets start this one off with the truth: I'm not a sci-fi fan. I don't dislike sci-fi but I have a hard time with it and it tends to get bogged down for me. But, that's neither here nor there because I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Let us begin:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, fa....nope, wrong science fiction story. In round about 200 years, humans have colonized the solar system. Our major players are Earth, Mars and the "Belt" (i.e. the stations located in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter). We've also got the OPA (Outer Planets Alliance) to contend with as well. The OPA is a group of loosely affiliated members fighting for the rights of those who inhabit the belt - known ever so cleverly as "belters".

"Too many dots," Miller said. "Not enough lines."

This baby starts of with a serious bang with our prologue introducing us to Julie. Julie and her crew have been taken captive and she's left alone in a dark locker for days on end. When her sanity begins to wane she breaks herself out to find an abandoned ship around her. When she does finally locate the crew, it's a ghastly sight to say the absolute least. This is where our journey begins - what happened to Julie? Where is she now? Why is the ship she was on sending out an emergency signal? Enter James 'the loudest mouth in the solar system' Holden, the XO of the ice miner ship the Canterbury. His ship has picked up the previously mentioned emergency signal.

The law of the solar system was unequivocal. In an environment as hostile to life as space, the aid and goodwill of your fellow humans wasn’t optional.

When Holden and his crew board the Scopuli they have no idea what they will find and how this lone decision will be the catalyst that will change their lives forever. Enter down and out Detective Miller, he's been given orders to investigate the missing daughter of a high-level, wealthy family. He has no idea that the case and search for one Juliette Mao will be the catalyst that will change his life forever as well.

Told from alternating POVs between Miller and Holden we're given a broad and overarching look at the entire world and future Corey has built. This novel is a behemoth of a story and clearly the first in a series. A lot of ground work is laid down in the first half of this to build a world thoroughly for the reader. The beginning got a bit bogged down for me and veered into the hard sci-fi that I'm not a big fan of. However, when the two story lines finally converge, man does this thing get cookin'.

You spent your life in a stone bubble with your food, your water, your air shipped in from places so distant you could barely find them with a telescope and a certain moral flexibility was necessary.

For being a novel so steeped in traditional science fiction tropes Leviathan Wakes was incredibly accessible as a whole. A lot of delicate intricacy is at work in this novel dealing not only in the overarching mystery but in more subtle ways as well. Things like sexism, racism, human morality and where we draw lines are discussed regularly throughout this read. The technical demands and logistics of deep space exploration and colonization were handled deftly and secured on a realistic and clearly researched basis.

I've been reading a lot of thriller / suspense novels recently and this was a really nice break from a lot of the patterns these types of stories fall into. There is a great mystery here that keeps the intrigue alive for the entirety of the read. The world building is top notch and I was left endlessly impressed throughout. Even further, it was so refreshing to read something that was full of genuinely likable characters. I felt a strong connection to the crew of the Canterbury and loved Miller's thread and timeline.

All in all this lost a star for me because while as whole the novel was accessible and enjoyable (even for a non-sci-fi reader) the first 200 or so pages dragged a bit for me. There were multiple points that I didn't understand and had to get clarification for from my husband (as this is his favorite book series). However, despite the tedious build up this was an impressive edge-of-your seat read and I enjoyed going out on a limb with this one. I'm not sure I'll be picking up the second installment right away as these novels are a huge undertaking but I'll certainly be reading on down the line!

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

There hadn’t been a cowboy on Earth in a hundred years, and Mars didn’t have a blade of grass that wasn’t under a dome or a horse that wasn’t in a zoo. Mariner valley had been settled by East Indians, Chinese and a small contingent of Texans. Apparently the drawl was viral. Because #TEXASFOREVER!